Robert Alexander (Bob) Solo joined the faculty of the economics department in 1966, and he served until his retirement in 1987. Bob’s path to Michigan State was an unusual one. He earned an undergraduate degree in economics from Harvard in 1938, served in the Navy during World War II, studied with Lionel Robbins and the renowned philosopher Karl Popper at the London School of Economics, and wrote scripts for television dramas in the early 1950s. He received a Ph.D. in Economics from Cornell in 1952, and he held various teaching posts until the late 1950’s, when he left academe to work in economic development, first for the National Planning Association in Washington DC, then with FOMENTO in Puerto Rico and with Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in France.
During his two decades at MSU, Bob taught a variety of economics courses, and even introduced two new courses to the academic catalogue. He was also an active researcher, publishing a number of books. A topic of particular interest to Bob was economic development and technological change, which he analyzed from what would today be called an interdisciplinary perspective, taking into account the joint evolution over time of political, social, and economic institutions.
An excellent portrayal of Bob as a colleague and scholar is provided by these excerpts from a remembrance of Bob circulated by his friend, emeritus professor of sociology Volodya Schlapentokh:
“He was a great scholar. His last book (reprinted 20 years after its initial publication—a very rare case in social science) along with previous books in fact founded a new economics which revealed the narrow mindedness of traditional economics. He called for a new vision of the field . . . It is only natural that he would encounter different viewpoints. But never for a second could such differences cause emotional confrontations. For Bob another point of view offered the motive for a productive discussion . . . Talents usually come in clusters. Bob was not only an outstanding scholar but he was also a painter, quite good, and a writer. He published a novel in French which I have in my library along with several other of Bob’s books . . . Bob was deeply kind. As an émigré I felt his kindness full scale. He was kind to everybody. Even his cats bore witness to his generosity. Bob was a spectacular person who defies replication.”